Festival For The Eno 2013- Day 1 (Thursday, July 4th)

EMPTY BUCKETS

When I arrived on Thursday morning to set up the reminder of my booth

 at The Festival For The Eno's first Day (July 4th),

all of the buckets and buckets of rain that the Weather Gods seemed to have in store for us

seemed to be purged, and sitting, dripping upside down on their rims to dry. 

The sun, formerly fearful of being extinguished completely, 

had begun to creep wearily back out of hiding,

 peeking out through the curtains of parting clouds.

After about 6 straight days of punative rain and thunder storms, 

very fortunate indeed were we

 that these clouds had decided to part just in time to make way for the Festival For The Eno.

 It could almost be read as some kind of demonstrative warning. 

It was if to say, "Whine and complain about it being hot at a river festival? 

Well, lets see it from the other end then shall we?!"..

And indeed, when I approached the dam early that morning, to make my annual pilgrimage across it,

I found that these sloshing bucket clouds had left in their wake 

a River Eno swollen as I have never seen it in my years.

This did not stop me from crossing, and I was forced to use every ounce of my concentration

to inch, step by careful step, across it, 

as one misplaced toe on a slippery rather than mossy rock,

 and the rushing force of the water would have surely swept me and my belongings over. 

(Not good judgement in retrospect).

Anyways, this meant no swimming for Law Abiding Festival Goers, by decree of the Sherrifs who gaurded her edges.

And with the muddy ground, and visitors still both a bit in shock and weary, the foot traffic was indeed a bit slow, though certainly up from last year.

I busied myself getting the remaining stages of my booth in place.

However, as the day wore on, a good right many brave souls risked getting a little wet (it never Did rain, though I was always ready).

And by and by, the people started to trickle in.

yep, chicks dig it.

A lovely mysterious lady
became entranced
 with one of my plants..

This gal right here is Joanna, and I need to give Joanna her proper due.

You see, with her incisive wit, Joanna has cut right through all of the tire fat, and helped me to understand the very nature of my own material better...

 

Joanna, my new Marketing Director

You see, early in the day, Joanna stopped in to the Reptire Hut to have a look around. Quizing her about what she saw, as I often do, I asked her what material the planter before her was made of.

And do you know what she replied?....

"Its made out of tire leather" she said.

Tire Leather! Tire Leather!!! 

And she is so right.

My wares are made from tire no more than purses are made from 'cow'.

Rather, you would say cow leather, or cow skin, or cow hide.

This feller right is the King of Booch.
Kambucha Brew Maestro of Buchi booch, down from Asheville.
I was glad to see they had found their way down. I was right impressed by their 6 sided hand crafted test design at LEAF Festival a couple years ago. Very cool dude, and he shared a snapping turtle story of his, this still chills me to the bone to this day...

This cute couple was bowled over by this Cactus Tirarium.
Who can blame them?

Most Colorful Couple At Eno
 (by my own estimation,
and the competition was STEEP)

As always, I got to see a few dear  old friends the Festival For the Eno.

My old buddy Eric Erwin showed up in spades,
wearing a new shirt design of his.
As Jessica Simpson invoking Daisy Dukes said
"I donow what it is, but a wownit" 

Always a pleasure to see the good Galia Goodman!

]

And it was great to see Rebecca Connelly back on the scene!

I even got a little square dancing in again this year, to the blistering tunes of the Five Point Rounders.

They laid down the hay, and we had a good time.

Special thanks to caller Aaron Ratcliff who graciously accepted the torch from caller Anna Lena Phillips (who left us with her Beau for the coast). And Aaron took that torch and ran with it.

Also, a hardy thanks to dance partners Gizelle and Francesca (pictured here), and later Maria. 

"Whoa, what's that? Nobody ever told me about these!"

"These Neither!"

Peregrin establishes contact with the TireSphere

Papa Got a Brand New Belt!

Doing The Reptire Can-Can.
Blessed by good company.

Woman from Taiwan, totally digging some Reptire De

I tell you what, while I was having a good old time, I just wasn't selling much!

Nobody was! And with just two days this year to make up our regular booth fee, we were all getting a little worried about loosing our shirts!

So I was especially gladdened and grateful when this sweet lady, Mrs. Wrenn, came by and purchased this Dragonz Eye, as a gift for her husband.

And finally at the end of my day, I had one more blessing yet,

 a suprise visit from the one and only Wayne,

Naturalist, Folk Artist, Storyteller, Animal Call Expert, and many other things, I am sure!

Wayne will forever be immortalized in my own mind at least

 for replying when I asked him

"What have you been up to Wayne?"

"Oh, just telling lies to the little children" :)

Walker and Lauren and I eagerly invited him to join us for a after the 'storm' rest, seated around a tire planter, on the floor of my tent, which, to my delight, he graciously accepted.

And some yarns he did graciously provide....

He began with a rollicking series of animal calls, each more poignant and eerie in their accuracy than the last...

Then, we moved on to other subjects, and Walker asked him about years spent as a soldier in the Viet Nam war. This was really fascinating to hear him talk about.

Such a unique pleasure, to sprawl out on a 'carpet' and be allowed to be a kid again, in the gentle hands of a master story teller. In retrospect, this is a pleasure that I wonder if ever adult kid doesn't need and deserve some time. It sure was some how nourishing to me that day. It somehow allowed me to transition to the next stage of my day.

After Walker and Loren had said Goodbye, I made a gift to Wayne of one my most lizardy coin purses.

He accepted it, and offered me quite a lot of good advice about marketing my wears.

Where this wise dude got all of expertise, I don't know.

I suspect, as he would tell it, just showing up

and paying attention.

  

Setting Up Booth for Eno 2013

So come Wednesday, July 3rd (incedentaly my Bday), but also, more pertinently, my Dday, the day to set up my booth for the big Festival For The Eno, the next day on the Forth, it was raining.

No, it was pouring. And the old man in the sky? Well he was ROARING.
Long has it been since I have witnessed the skies open up with such vehemence.
What gives big G? Who might have pissed in your corn flakes, I wonder, to invoke this breed of wrath?

Now I will not say that I was not actually enjoying this thunderous storm, on some levels, because I sure was. It cooled everything down to an unprecedented cool, that I just have never known in conjuntion with this festival. This made my work at that moment considerably more pleasent.

However, I had to wonder what effect all of this weather was going to have on the festival, and was already having on my good friends already dealing with these issues on the festival grounds....

Now that I had it, was it even worth loading up Diane's van, and driving all the way to Durham

I made a quick call in to see what the out look was.
"Moving right ahead" was the answer, "come on down".

Well OK!....Charging Forth it is!
I made a big fat memo note, and posted it in the front of my frontal lobe, that read something like, "Travis, you are just a small piece of this very large puzzle. And right now, the good people who are putting it together are probably dealing with some pretty hectic adjustments. So go with the flow on this one, Dude, just go with this flow, OK?"
And that was my mantra through out, and I think it served us all well.

So I loaded up the van, and headed out.

I built and bought myself some crates, tubs and boxes,
which made for a much more solid base layer of my van packing.
This was a satisfying improvement over years past.

As I reached Highway 64, on my way out of town in this crazy downpour, out of the corner of my eye, I saw an unmistakable black heap, laying motionless at the edge of the busy 5 lane highway.
A big hulking snapping turtle, a casualty, slain by the cross town traffic fire.
I drove over to the gas station, parked, hopped out, and watching for cars, drug her out of the road and onto the grass. Her carapace (top shell) was cracked in two places, it looked like she had been squarely, and maybe purposefully run over by a four wheeler, but her limbs were all intact, as sad, and droopy, and lifeless as they were.



She had most probably been making her way from a wetland behind the hotel, to an old farm pond that lies behind what it now the Burger King. I've found dead snappers out there before in the heat of the summer.
But this find, as disturbing as this may sound to you, was a different special circumstance.
For, due to the icy cold storm water she had been laying in, that had been washing over her, seemed to be a cool, clean, fresh kill.
I questioned myself.
Of all the many many details that I still must attend to, compounded by chaos that this weather will wreak on the very foundations of the festival, do I really have any room at all, on the top of my proverbial pile, to load a hulking snapping turtle? I looked at the van, stuffed to the gils with tire art.
No, I did not.
I looked back at this pitiful creature, of ancient dinosaurian grace, laying slain in the grass.
Did I really have the heart to just leave her there either?
With a deep sigh, I realized that no, I didn't either.
And so, grabbing a spare black garbage bag, I sifted her into it, and hoisted all 15 lbs of her onto the floor of the van.
Here we go!...Off to Durham.

I had to do a few errands on the way into town.
I picked up a few armloads of fated discounted plants at Lowes, with the storm threatening to rip the tin roof off.




And out near Lystra Road, where Janice and I have a few landscaping clients, I came across yet another turtle, this one a yellow bellied slider, or a cooter, and ALIVE.

"Get in the van" I said, nestling this poor gal against the immobile lump in the black plastic garbage bag. Surely, she thought, this is the end.

But I took her in the direction she was heading, finding a big wooded area behind the shopping complex she was attempting to cross.



When I finally got to Durham, it was already getting dark.
I dropped by folks place, and discreetely slipped this hulking mass into the freezer.
I could explain later...
Off I went to the West Point On The Eno, to set up what little I could in the rain.

When I arrived, I found that my beloved booth spot, while itself relatively dry, was now standing as kind of an island in a swamp that had overtaken the lowest reaches of the park, that connect it to the beautiful, river, which was now raging at its banks.

Greg graciously offered to let me stay if I wanted, or to accomodate me if I wanted to find a new spot.
And so I went off searching in the dwindling light, like a lost tribe of Isreal, for my escape from the floods, a new promised land?

I was about ready to stick it out in the swamp down below, when I spied a spot across the mill race, that looked to be unused. While not yet an official space, it was a tent sized room, hidden beneath the canopy of an old tree, quite like my ussual spot.

The difference was, the fingers of the these limbs almost drooped down to touch the ground, creating sort of a fortress around this space.

So my question to Cheif Greg was, a) can I use this space, and b) if so, can I do a little pruning to shape it up. After some discussion, the word came back- a resounding yes, you may, and you can even borrow some pruners! It seemed that Greg, Bless him, was also very much going with the flow, which I can only imagine he has learned as a natural survival skill in many years directing the festival.

And so I wend to work, setting up the skeleton of booth in the dark of a torrential downpour, up to my ankles in muddy mess, wearing nothing but my swim suit! When I finally had that up, I got the pruners, and went to work carving out a space under the tree, as well as for my neighbors to be, NC WARN.
When it was all done, as far as I could tell in the dark, darned if it didn't look like home.

However, I have got to say, that as hard as I WAS working, the folks putting on the Festival were working MUCH MUCH HARDER!

They had been living, breathing, sleeping, probably eating mud for the last week, at least, attending to the thousands of details involved with bringing thousands of people, and electrical equipment, and on and on and on, together in the unpredictable outdoors.

My hat is really really off to these troopers that make this thing happen every year.

Even More Preps for Eno 2013

This year, I have finally decided to try adding some paint to the surfaces of my creations.

This is something I have not necessarily resisted, but have never felt compelled to do, because for me, the native colors of tires are excited enough as are.

However, in the past few years, an exciting, pretty solid and, for me, compelling color scheme has been steadily coalescing, and I just can't resist it any longer.

Here is a mighty fine knot.

'

While I find it beautiful as is, I thought it would lend itself well to an interesting paint job.

Especially under the brush of my mother Edie. Edie, and her artistic sisters have a tradition of painting the hell out of just about anything they can get their hands on! Mailbox's, chairs, stools, birdhouses all have been the lucky victims of family reunions in Wisconsin!

So I think I am going to try turning Edie loose on it, if I convince her..

In the meantime though, it occured to me that I already have a certain vision of it. And so I couldn't resist trying some of these colors out on it, maybe to send it in the right direction.

While I was able to begin to lay a ground work for her, I quickly realized that I do not yet have the flair that she does (or at least the time at that moment to delve into it), so I am looking forward to passing it on to Edie, to let it sloop and drip into the funkadrome!

Preparations for Eno 2013

Welp, I've been slaving away, getting ready for yet another year of Good and Green Glooor-ay at the Festival For The Eno.

It is always fun for me to see how I can push my own envelope a little each year; this challenge (and seeing people interact with my tire art) is part of what keeps me coming back for more!

However, in order to Outdo my efforts, I first need to Redo my efforts, and hey, sometimes even this can be kinda hard! (as I am brutally reminded every year).

So I started out producing some serious stock to work with.

This meant digging through my tire catacombs, to see what tires might be laying around, as well as going out hunting...  what I was seeking was tires that had a certain je ne sais quois...  Eno elan to them.
A certain flow, or interest that I thought might some how be turned on a whirl for this festival.

There was one that in fact did not have much appearent flow, but that had vexed me last year, and had been lingering around ever since. It was a motor cross tire, the real knuckly knobby kind, that I ussually bust my own knuckles trying finess. This one was no exception (and there have been one or two exepetions), and was down right stubborn. So I decided that a year was long enough for this one to alude me, and fixed it in my sights, and grips.
My first move, ironically, was to put the thing in time out; what amounts to solitary confinement for a tire.
This meant coiling it and binding it in a straight jacket, to let it stew in its own juices for a few days...

 When I came back to check on it, I was relieved to find that this seemed to have done it some good. It was ready to talk; to cooperate!

Not only was it ready to talk, it poured its guts out on the table, and when we were done, there lay a brilliantly supple knot, a tire reborn!

I don't mean to get all gushy on you, but seeing such a hard tire find its way into a soft knot kinda makes a father proud. I've managed to avoid human children thus far, but I'll tell you what, siring a good tredknot can be right satisfying and fulfilling at times.

After that hard case was cracked, I was on a role. So I decided to give the kiddies a bath!

I picked up this awesome horse scrubber somewhere (can't remember where), and my 'pony scrubber' works better on bicycle tires, it seems just made for motorcycle tires.